A Mobile Platform for Movement Tracking Based on a Fast-Execution-Time Optical-Flow Algorithm

A multi-purpose mechanical platform to track moving objects in three-dimensional space has been developed. It is composed of one main microcontroller board that processes all system data, two cameras, three motors, and one secondary microcontroller board to position a platform with three degrees of freedom. The system computes the optical flow and moves the cameras accordingly, tracking motion within the visual scene. The platform operates autonomously. To the best of our knowledge, there are no similar systems reported with low-resolution image sensors and low-cost microcontrollers. Existing solutions rely on personal computers and advanced FPGAs to process image data. This article concludes that the optical flow operation is efficient even using an image sensor with very low resolution. Thus, the system complexity and image data processing are alleviated significantly. The platform can be easily adapted to different application scenarios by adding new peripherals, sensors, or image processing algorithms. A detailed description of the system design and experimental results are provided.